Happy (Belated) 200th Birthday Colombia

I arrived in Medellin just in time for Colombia’s 200th anniversary.

The Bicentenario, bicentennial, was celebrated just as we celebrate the independence of our country.

Everyone shows their pride for Colombia by hanging yellow, blue, and red flags from their balconies, windows and cars.

Colombian’s take a long weekend and spend time with friends and family. They bar-b-q and drink for four days straight. Then finally they end it off with a bang… FIREWORKS!

This year the country of Colombia went all out with its celebration and spent an estimated 1.5 million US dollars on their never before seen fireworks display.

The fireworks took place on Monday, July 19th at 7pm. Unfortunately I, and thousands of others, wasn’t able to make it down to the Medellin River in order to see the show in person.

I left my apartment in Envigado at 5 pm but there were no taxi’s or buses driving down to the river due to crazy amounts of traffic.

I then walked down to the Metro station and proceeded to wait on a line of about 300 people in order to buy my Metro ticket. About 30 minutes into this I was advised that the Metro was no longer running due to the large amounts of people already at the site of the fireworks.

I rushed back home and made it just in time to catch the fireworks display on TV. They turned out to be way better than I had anticipated and I can honestly say that they were just as amazing as the NYC 4th of July fireworks display.

Nice job Medellin… Happy 200th birthday Colombia!